Calcium Phosphate
Some choose the wind
so they can go
all the places their body
never went alive.
Others choose mixture
with cement, as a rock
at the ocean’s bottom
to be part of the big whole,
or crushed into a diamond
to be prettier than
the sack they were in life.
I choose porcelain.
Flush twice.
Snake me if I clog.
The Best Years
She loves her house, the way
it holds memories of her five children.
It loves her and wants her to stay
forever, but forever will come some day.
It won’t be a cause for celebration–
wheelchair-bound and hauled away
from this warm, sheltering thing, to play
pitch or pinochle in a freezing institution
with other scarecrows who don’t want to stay
in this Eden where piss and sterility
lace the halls, where maximum extension
of life is the goal, and nurses weigh
her carcass on a scale every day to see
if she’s gained an ounce of nutrition
during her blank and inscrutable stay
in stained bed sheet limbo with no key,
with rare visits from texted-up grandchildren.
She loves her house, the way
it loves her and wants her to stay.
Road Hazard
He drives around and doesn’t pay attention
when lights turn red or two lanes change to one.
His accident will be of great proportion.
If small, then he will surely flee the scene.
He’s racked with brooding every day he lives,
more sensitive, but others don’t believe him.
When heart erupts, his concentration gives,
he cannot dowse the lovers who deceived him,
but they weren’t lovers, only in his mind.
They never knew their eyes stayed in his soul,
and he’s ignored another Yield sign.
The road is slick, one tire blows a hole–
he spins three times and slams into a truck.
The guys who hose the blood don’t give a fuck.
About the poet:
Marc Darnell is a floor tech and online tutor in Omaha, NE, and has also been a phlebotomist, hotel supervisor, busboy, editorial assistant, farmhand, devout recluse, and incurable brooder — leading to near auto collisions. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa, and has published poems in The Lyric, Eclectic Muse, Skidrow Penthouse, Shot Glass Journal, The HyperTexts, Candelabrum, Quantum Leap, Aries, Ship of Fools, Open Minds Quarterly, The Fib Review, Verse-Virtual, Blue Unicorn, and The Pangolin Review, among others.
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